One of the world’s most resilient international water treaties has been thrown into unprecedented crisis. In April 2025, immediate aftermath of the Pahalgam attack — in which 26 tourists were killed in Indian-administered Kashmir — New Delhi, accusing Islamabad for the terror strike, unilaterally announced that the Indus Waters Treaty would be held in abeyance “with immediate effect, until Pakistan credibly and irrevocably abjures its support for cross-border terrorism.”
Pakistan’s response moved through several registers — rhetorical condemnation, legal counter-argument, and issuing threats— before arriving, one year later, at the UN Security Council. In January 2026 , Pakistan organized Arria Formula meeting in which the country’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN), Ambassador Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, stated that India’s position on the IWT constitutes “a serious violation of international legal obligations, with far-reaching humanitarian, environmental, and peace and security implications.”
Following this, in late April 2026, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Muhammad Ishaq Dar wrote to the Council’s president, Jamal Fares Alrowaiei, warning of grave peace, security, and humanitarian consequences for the 240 million people who depend on the Indus system, and calling upon the Council to act. On the other hand, India has been consistently saying that water issues cannot be insulated from cross-border terrorism and in an interview to The Times of India, India’s Home Minister Amit Shah said, “No, it [IWT] will never be restored. International treaties can’t be annulled unilaterally but we had the right to put it in abeyance, which we have done.”
Notably, Pakistan holds a non-permanent seat on the Security Council for the 2025–2026 term, elected by an overwhelming 182 votes in June 2024 — its eighth time serving in that role. Whether the Security Council is the right institution for that test is the central question this analysis addresses.
Understanding Islamabad’s Decision to Raise the Issue with the UNSC
The IWT of 1960 has long been regarded as one of the most resilient instruments in the history of international water treaties. Mediated by the World Bank and signed in Karachi by the then Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Pakistan’s then President General Ayub Khan, the treaty survived wars (1965, 1971, 1999), series of military tensions, and decades of sustained political differences and hostility between two nuclear-armed neighbors.
The IWT allocates the three eastern rivers — Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej — to India, and the three western rivers — the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab — primarily to Pakistan. The arrangement gives Pakistan access to approximately 80 percent of the Indus system’s total flow. Agriculture, which depends on the Indus system for roughly 90 percent of its water needs, accounts for approximately 23 percent of Pakistan’s GDP and employs around 37 percent of its workforce, making the river system fundamental to the country’s economic and food security. Given such dependence on the Indus waters, any change in the IRS rivers’ flow carries a devastating economic impact.
Under Article 33 of the UN Charter, parties to any dispute whose continuation is likely to endanger international peace and security are obliged first to seek resolution through negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, or recourse to regional agencies or other peaceful means of their choice. Under Article 34, the Security Council “may investigate any dispute, or any situation which might lead to international friction or give rise to a dispute, in order to determine whether the continuance of the dispute or situation is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security”. Under 35 (1) any member of the UN may bring any dispute of the nature mentioned in the above article. Chapter VII empowers the UN to determine the existence of a threat to the peace, a breach of the peace, or an act of aggression, and take measures to prevent aggravation of the situation and restore peace.
The question of whether the UNSC can meaningfully resolve the IWT dispute requires a clear understanding of its track record on transboundary water disputes. The UNSC first discussed the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) issue in 2020. The GERD dispute on the Blue Nile dates to 2011 when Ethiopia started its construction. Ethiopia argues that the dam is vital for its development, Egypt and Sudan , the downstream countries have expressed concerns. On 15 September 2021, the Security Council issued a presidential statement on the GERD which called for the parties to resume African Union-led negotiations to reach a “binding agreement” on the dam’s filling and operation. At that time, the Indian representative to the UN said that “as a general rule, transboundary water issues do not belong to the domain of the UN Security Council” and stressed that the UNSC president’s text does not constitute a “precedent for the Council to intervene or adjudicate in any other transboundary water disputes.”
Given the situation, what options does the UN have? The UNSC may discuss and, like in case of the GERD, ask Pakistan to go back to the World Bank which mediated the IWT in the 1960s. However, soon after India held the IWT in abeyance, World Bank PresidentAjay Banga stated that “we have no role to play beyond a facilitator. There’s a lot of speculation in the media about how the World Bank will step in and fix the problem but it’s all bunk. The World Bank’s role is merely as a facilitator.” India has not accepted the legitimacy of the World Bank appointed Court of Arbitration on hydropower projects on Western Rivers. A recent judgement by the CoA at The Hague regarding maximum pondage on the western rivers was categorically rejected by India, “as it has firmly rejected all prior pronouncements of the illegally constituted CoA.” India has also stayed out of the Neutral Experts meeting since April 2025.
India insists on bilateralism with its ties with Pakistan. Under the Simla Agreement of 1972, the two countries “ resolved to settle their differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations or by any other peaceful means mutually agreed upon between them.” After India’s decision on the IWT in April 2025, Pakistan threatened to suspend all bilateral agreements including the Simla Agreement. However, it is not dead and remains operational. The UNSC may ask the two countries to engage bilaterally to address their water-related matters.
At present the two countries are at the bottom of their ties. Yet, the doors for talks remain open. Recently, Dattatreya Hosabale, the second in command in the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, an ideological mentor of the Bharatiya Janata Party, in an interview to Indian news agency Press Trust of India, called for talks with Pakistan. It extrapolated as the government’s view due to closeness between the BJP and RSS.
Conclusion
The GERD case shows that UNSC may not be an effective arbiter of bilateral water disputes. In another past example, Bangladesh went to the UN General Assembly on the Ganga waters issue, paving the way for the eventual signing of the water sharing agreement between India and Bangladesh. Yet there were other factors contributing to the signing of the agreement. Bangladesh’s then Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, in her address to the UNGA, raised the Ganga waters matter saying that “the pledges made by India at the time of commissioning the Farakka Barrage remained unfulfilled.” India signed the Ganga/Ganges water treaty in 1996 primarily because of having friendly Sheikh Hasina as Bangladesh’s Prime Minister and the effect of the Gujral Doctrine.
Bilateral relations remain at a low ebb, but the doors for talks are open. That this dialogue will be initiated through the UNSC is in serious doubt given past precedent. A more likely path forward continues to lie in direct bilateral engagement between the two countries.
